Curse

Cygnus_Zero · Dec 28, 2006, 06:07 PM // 18:07

I agree it's ridiculous, but it is what it is so we move forward using ectos as money. It's completely ghetto that we have to do that but there's no other way.

Shanaeri Rynale · Dec 28, 2006, 06:50 PM // 18:50

The 100K limit really makes no sense now. Most traders like myself use ecto at the trader price-1k to make up for the cash limit. So lets say someone buys an item for 100K+100 ecto(not unheard of btw). If that person has to buy the ecto from a trader then the transaction will cost them between 50 and 100K extra just to get around this limit.

Of course the 1000K limit forces people to hoard ecto, making the losses due to conversion probably more.

In addition I would like to bet more people have been scammed due to these limits than any other reason in the game.

In data storage terms 1000 plat would take up no more space than 2000 etc, so the only logical reason is for economic reasons. Which are kinda defunct as people use ecto to work around it.

mrgoat · Dec 28, 2006, 08:23 PM // 20:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hand of Ruin

Not really... all the data anet has to store is compressed... why do you think our gw.dat files are nearly 4 gig? We store all the large shit, and the servers only store the numbers.

I'm willing to bet that all the accounts for a particular region can be stored in a 200g drive.

I'm willing to bet that all the accounts for a particular region cannot be stored in a 200g drive. It is also unlikely that it's all stored compressed, as the servers would need to uncompress, use, recompress, and store that data constantly, and this a transactional database they're using. That means a huge increase in processing time for compression, which would require more money. I can't think of any reason to store your tables in compressed form, when they're in active use constantly.

Please think about what you're saying before you make ludicrous claims. 100k is a weird number to pick if you're worried about database space, that much is true though.

What they're likely doing is storing heavily-tweaked binary packed data in the various database fields, and just twiddling bits. That sort of thing doesn't tend to compress very well anyway.

lishi · Dec 28, 2006, 09:06 PM // 21:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by mrgoat

I'm willing to bet that all the accounts for a particular region cannot be stored in a 200g drive. It is also unlikely that it's all stored compressed, as the servers would need to uncompress, use, recompress, and store that data constantly, and this a transactional database they're using. That means a huge increase in processing time for compression, which would require more money. I can't think of any reason to store your tables in compressed form, when they're in active use constantly.

Please think about what you're saying before you make ludicrous claims. 100k is a weird number to pick if you're worried about database space, that much is true though.

What they're likely doing is storing heavily-tweaked binary packed data in the various database fields, and just twiddling bits. That sort of thing doesn't tend to compress very well anyway.

ok lets say an account is 10 kb

10°000 * 3°000°000 = 30°000°000°000

wow my notebook can store it.

now anet is probably using some high perfomance and high reliable raid disk system who might even cost 100x or 1000x my notebook hard disk.

but this isnt the point.

We live in a era of terabytes if anet have probrem to find 10kb for each account then they have a probrem.

(if you think 10k isnt much think it as 100k the reasoning dont change)

if anet

w00t! · Dec 28, 2006, 11:14 PM // 23:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cygnus_Zero

I agree it's ridiculous, but it is what it is so we move forward using ectos as money. It's completely ghetto that we have to do that but there's no other way.

I love it how pasty white kids call stuff ghetto.

In any event, the limit is just fine. Probably 99.9% of the players will never come close to reaching the cap, and ectos are great for bartering around the limit. The above 100k limit can be managed around by trading ectos back and forth for cash too, so you can actually pay cash for any mount up to 1+ million.

And so what if it is slightly inefficient? Gold sinks are not bad, and inventive people have stepped in to facilitate high value trades.

These are all signs of a vibrant economy.

Mr_T_bot · Dec 29, 2006, 12:11 AM // 00:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shanaeri Rynale

In data storage terms 1000 plat would take up no more space than 2000 etc, so the only logical reason is for economic reasons. Which are kinda defunct as people use ecto to work around it.

The only factual reason is economic reasons. I know there are more people like me who have had accounts more than 2 months.

IT WAS PUT IN AS A CAP TO HURT INFLATION

Some Guru Named Kai · Dec 29, 2006, 12:33 AM // 00:33

Anet was running out of things to "nerf".

shardfenix · Dec 29, 2006, 12:34 AM // 00:34

The cap is 100k because it limits item prices.

MerLock · Dec 29, 2006, 01:08 AM // 01:08

If people stop buying things over 100k, then you wouldn't be seeing things 100K + x ectos.

leprekan · Dec 29, 2006, 01:26 AM // 01:26

Simple solution ... everyone give me all thier gold above 90k. I am here to help

Antheus · Dec 29, 2006, 01:52 AM // 01:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by leprekan

Simple solution ... everyone give me all thier gold above 90k. I am here to help

Meh, I'll take everything over 1k. I won't discriminate against those who aren't rich enough to have 90k.

mrgoat · Dec 29, 2006, 05:45 AM // 05:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by lishi

ok lets say an account is 10 kb

10°000 * 3°000°000 = 30°000°000°000

wow my notebook can store it.

now anet is probably using some high perfomance and high reliable raid disk system who might even cost 100x or 1000x my notebook hard disk.

but this isnt the point.

We live in a era of terabytes if anet have probrem to find 10kb for each account then they have a probrem.

(if you think 10k isnt much think it as 100k the reasoning dont change)

if anet

There's no way an account is 10k. No. Possible. Way. There's the unlocks, the map data for all three campaigns per character, the inventories (including dye colors on items), the builds, the unlocked skills per character, the quest logs and state data, all title tracks, etc. The list goes on. Let's say a whole account takes 1meg, an estimate on the very low side.

That's three million megs, or, 2.8 terabytes. Lets add overhead on a transactional database, to ensure integrity, and rollback capability: 10 terabytes, right there, at least. Please do not underestimate the requirements to keep transaction logs. They are large.

Surely you can cram that on your run of the mill drive you picked up from best buy. No, you won't need a serious datacenter with specialized hardware to access 10 terabytes of data with sub 1 second access times. Yes, I'm sarcastic.

Like I said, please think before you claim it's "easy" or "cheap" to do what arenanet does. You're not a dba, and you're certainly not a dba well versed in data warehousing. If you were, you wouldn't have said what you said. If you are, and you said what you said, I wish you well when you get fired.

If you're so sure you can store, access, and process that data, why exactly haven't you offered arenanet your laptop up to help run Guild Wars? Surely you and your single core P3 with a 200gig drive can take care of all our lag problems.

Why, I bet I can run arenanet's datacenter on my old 286! I'll just stab a monkey with the power cord and we'll be good to go: saving arenanet enough money per year to retire to the carribean while putting out guildwars 2: electric boogaloo.

Let's have a go and see how that works out.

death fuzzy · Dec 29, 2006, 06:20 AM // 06:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by JGaff

Your storage is capped at 1000k. After that, start stockpiling ectos. Most people don't have 100k+ to throw around (seeing as a good chunk of the population are more casual gamers...

well, 1800k if you max out the cash on all 8 characters.

2000k when ch 4 comes out.

Yawgmoth · Dec 29, 2006, 06:24 AM // 06:24

100kB data per account is actually pretty high estimate, i'm sure it's not more. But it doesn't matter in this topic.

The 100k gold limit per character and 1kk storage limit was a design choice. Technically it would be no problem at all to have it much much higher, but there were some other reasons to have them at that level.
Devs expected that there would be trades at over 100k with some items used as currency. So the limit doesn't affect the prices at all, if something is worth more than 100k people will find a way to make the deal and get around that limit.
I hate the limits myself but unfortunately for me I don't expect them to be increased.

phoenixtech · Dec 29, 2006, 08:35 AM // 08:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by mrgoat

There's no way an account is 10k. No. Possible. Way. There's the unlocks, the map data for all three campaigns per character, the inventories (including dye colors on items), the builds, the unlocked skills per character, the quest logs and state data, all title tracks, etc. The list goes on. Let's say a whole account takes 1meg, an estimate on the very low side.

That's three million megs, or, 2.8 terabytes. Lets add overhead on a transactional database, to ensure integrity, and rollback capability: 10 terabytes, right there, at least. Please do not underestimate the requirements to keep transaction logs. They are large.

Surely you can cram that on your run of the mill drive you picked up from best buy. No, you won't need a serious datacenter with specialized hardware to access 10 terabytes of data with sub 1 second access times. Yes, I'm sarcastic.

Like I said, please think before you claim it's "easy" or "cheap" to do what arenanet does. You're not a dba, and you're certainly not a dba well versed in data warehousing. If you were, you wouldn't have said what you said. If you are, and you said what you said, I wish you well when you get fired.

If you're so sure you can store, access, and process that data, why exactly haven't you offered arenanet your laptop up to help run Guild Wars? Surely you and your single core P3 with a 200gig drive can take care of all our lag problems.

Why, I bet I can run arenanet's datacenter on my old 286! I'll just stab a monkey with the power cord and we'll be good to go: saving arenanet enough money per year to retire to the carribean while putting out guildwars 2: electric boogaloo.

Let's have a go and see how that works out.

100kb for an entire account is prob too high. If you look at your saved template files, it's usually around 24 BYTES of information, and it contains class, 2ndary class, attributes, all 8 skills and their positions from 1-8. All that in 24 bytes. There's a finite dye combination that can be EASILY done in less than 8 bits, most likely even less. Map data is stored in 0.1% chunks and you have a grid (notice the fog of war goes in grids) and can be EASILY stored. Transactional log? They aren't running a bank, they have periodic backups and roll back affect EVERYONE not just one person.

EVEN if you were to assume that it really does take up 1 megabyte of storage. I'll give you a nice comparison. I can find multiple free-web based emails that will give me 1 GIGABYTE+ of storage and they prob have several MILLION customers. Keep in mind that most of these webmail service is provided for FREE. We pay GW every chapter and they can't store 100kb of data? Get serious.

foo · Dec 29, 2006, 10:34 AM // 10:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by phoenixtech

...
EVEN if you were to assume that it really does take up 1 megabyte of storage. I'll give you a nice comparison. I can find multiple free-web based emails that will give me 1 GIGABYTE+ of storage and they prob have several MILLION customers. Keep in mind that most of these webmail service is provided for FREE. We pay GW every chapter and they can't store 100kb of data? Get serious.

nicely said.

Chris Blackstar · Dec 29, 2006, 10:51 AM // 10:51

it's to protect the in game economy, and nothing else. With out a cap of some kind, players would have huge amounts of gold or items, and become banks, thus causing players to abandon normal play, and just go to them for money. It's bad enough to see items going for 100K+xx ectos, given that most ectos go for 6K between players, nothing in the game is worth 700K to 1000K. Personally I am glad there is a limit, it prevents people with too much time on there hands to minipulate the game and system, just because they have the attitude, "I can do it". Anet nerf it by bringing in titles, so players would abuse that instead of hording money. Now titles are a joke because of the players out there with the "I can do it" attitude, these are also the same type of players that are knowm as hackers, it's the only challenge out there for them.

Remember this game is supposed to be balenced, so the limit is just that, to increase it would be the same as if they decreased it, it would devalue the game economy.

Shanaeri Rynale · Dec 29, 2006, 11:20 AM // 11:20

Thats the point, it's not protecting the economy, people just use another denomination of gold called an ecto. So why not do away with the limits since it's pointless.

It's a little like saying we'll limit everyones bank acount to 1000 dollars and if you want to spend more than that you need to use gold to make up the difference when all thats needed is to make a 1000 dollar bill.

Nexus Icon · Dec 29, 2006, 11:35 AM // 11:35

Just to echo what phoenixtech has said, I'm willing to bet that the storage capacity for an account's storage space (not character information) is miniscule in data terms.
Ever wondered why material stacks are limited to 250?
8 bits of information make 1 Byte.
The maximum number of combinations for those 8 bits is 256.
So the numeric value of a given stack can be stored in 1 Byte of information.
We can be generous and assume that the necessary identifiers for a stack (colour, name, type, owner, etc.), are stored in an extra 3 Bytes.
That's 4 Bytes.

For 3 million accounts, that would be 12 million bytes.
There are 1024 Bytes in a KiloByte, so 12 million Bytes = 11,719KB (and that's rounded up).
There are 1024KB in a MegaByte, so 11,719KB = 12MB rounded up, uncompressed.
My my, that's a HUGE amount of disk space!

Really, the space occupied by user accounts on ANet's servers is probably trivial.

The more pertinent issue to those familiar with data, storage and networks is providing simultaneous access to that information for 3 million + accounts. That's some serious computing power and network/disk bandwidth required.

So in closing, storing user information is of barely any concern whatsoever, but providing access to that storage for all users is where things get complicated.

Anarion Silverhand · Dec 29, 2006, 11:57 AM // 11:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by shardfenix

The cap is 100k because it limits item prices.

Bingo.

Anet has many times said that this game isn't about having the phattest lewt, but it's all about player skill.